NPR

Fifty years ago, just after Thanksgiving of 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the landmark law that created special education as it exists today, and guaranteed all children with disabilities the right to a “free appropriate public education.” Yet, “rather than celebrating progress, we face a crisis,” warned a recent letter to Congress, signed by hundreds of disability, civil rights, and education groups. That crisis, according to the letter, is “the dismantling of the very infrastructure Congress created to ensure children with disabilities could reach their full potential.”

According to court records, the Trump administration fired 121 of 135 employees at OSERS during the recent government shutdown. “We can’t, in our wildest imagination, understand how the secretary can fulfill her obligation under the law with so few staff,” said Denise Marshall, head of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).